Ross Pople

Conductor Ross Pople is the founder and leader of the London Festival Orchestra, a modular, independent ensemble based at The Warehouse, a converted Victorian industrial building located in London's South Bank. Pople originally started out as a cellist in his native New Zealand, and after studying with émigré musicians there he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Music. During his course of study at the RAM, Yehudi Menuhin took Pople under his wing and named him the solo cellist for the Menuhin Festival Orchestra; Pople also studied in Paris with André Navarra and Nadia Boulanger. In 1971 Pople was named principal cellist with BBC Symphony Orchestra, a distinction so accorded by then-conductor Pierre Boulez.